Tesla’s (NASDAQ:TSLA) Q4 and FY 2024 earnings call comes on the heels of the company’s Q4 and FY 2024 Update Letter, which was released after the closing bell on January 29, 2025.
Tesla’s Q4 2024 results:
- Earnings Per Share (GAAP): $0.66 per share
- Earnings Per Share (Non-GAAP): $0.73 per share
- Operating Income: $7.1 billion GAAP; $7.1 billion GAAP net income in 2024; $2.3 billion in Q4 including $0.6 billion mark-to-market gain on digital assets.
- Total Revenues: $25.7 billion
- Total Automotive Revenues: $19.80 billion
Q4 & FY 2024 Earnings Call at 4:30pm CT today https://t.co/uFCg69a6tN— Tesla (@Tesla) January 29, 2025
The following are live updates from Tesla’s Q4 and FY 2024 earnings call. I will be updating this article in real-time, so please keep refreshing the page to view the latest updates on this story. The first entry starts at the bottom of the page.
17:41 CT – And that closes Tesla’s Q4 and FY 2024 earnings call! Thanks so much for joining us, and see you next quarter!
17:40 CT – Dan Levy of Barclays asks about Trump’s anti-EV mandate and Elon Musk’s view on it. The CEO noted that at this point, sustainable transport is inevitable. “At this point I think sustainable transport is inevitable. You can’t stop the advent of electric cars. It’s gonna happen. The only thing holding back electric cars is range, and that is a solved problem,” Musk said.
17:37 CT – Pierre Ferragu of New Street Research asked about Tesla’s plans to deploy robotaxis on June. He wonders if he can drive down to Texas in June to test it. Musk said sure, and at the time, Tesla would be using its own fleet for its initial autonomous ride-hailing program. Cars won’t be from individual owners.
Musk also predicts that Tesla owners will be able to add car their cars to the robotaxi fleet by next year.
Tesla is also working toward FSD Unsupervised which will allow people to check their emails, texts, etc., while the vehicle is in motion, but the company is very cautious. Tesla has seen that people are turning off FSD Unsupervised to check their texts.
17:30 CT – Adam Jonas of Morgan Stanley asked if Elon Musk still does not believe in Lidar. Elon Musk says he still does not. “Obviously, humans drive without shooting lasers out of their eyes,” Musk joked. He also explained that he is not anti-Lidar per se. He’s just anti-Lidar when it comes to autonomous cars.
17:25 CT – As for FSD in China, Musk noted that training videos in China cannot be exported out. Tesla figuring out how to train FSD Unsupervised in China. One of the challenges is bus lanes, which are very complex in China.
“Hopefully, we can have Unsupervised FSD in other countries next year,” Musk said.
17:18 CT – Analyst questions start with Bernstein. He asks Elon Musk about what he is doing to push Tesla’s management team to accelerate the company’s programs. Musk noted that Tesla is working on perfecting real-world AI. “I spend a lot of time with the Tesla AI team and the Tesla Optimus team,” he said.
Musk noted that there are many challenges with Optimus and vehicle autonomy, but the pieces are there. He predicts Europe will be a challenge for FSD Unsupervised. FSD Unsupervised is expected to be presented to the EU in the Netherlands in May, with a release probably next year.
17:15 CT – A question about HW3 vehicles was asked. Tesla noted that the company is not giving up on HW3. Tesla is still working on HW3 but updates will trail HW4 releases.
“We are going to have to upgrade Hardware 3 for people who bought FSD. That’s the honest answer. It’s going to be painful and difficult but that’s what we’re going to have to do,” Musk admitted.
Another question was asked if Tesla has given up on Solar Roof. Tesla noted that it has not. Musk noted that Tesla has found growth by distributing Solar Roof to the roofing industry.
17:14 CT – Another question is asked, this time about the Tesla Semi and how it will affect revenue and scale. Tesla noted that preparations for production are ongoing, and that production is expected to start late this year from Reno. He also thinks the Semi will be incredibly valuable with FSD Unsupervised.
Musk noted that the United States actually has a shortage of truck drivers. And truck drivers are human, so they get tired. “I have a lot of respect for truck drivers, because it’s a tough job,” Musk said.
He noted that more people are leaving trucking than those entering it. With this in mind, autonomy is extremely important. “It’s a several billion-a-year opportunity,” Musk said. That said, the CEO also noted that “all of this is gonna pale in comparison to Optimus.”
17:10 CT – Musk reiterated that Optimus will be used at Tesla factories first, doing tedious tasks that no one wants to do.
Optimus production Version 2–maybe starting mid-next year–will be designed for 10,000 units a month vs 1,000 units a month. Version 3 is for 100,000 units per month, and with Version 2, Optimus robots may be delivered to other companies.
“Demand will not be a problem, even at a high price,” Musk said. He also noted that at one million units per year, Optimus’ production costs will be around or less than $20,000.
17:04 CT – Another investor question asked if Optimus is designed locked. Musk noted that Optimus is not design-locked at all. However, the CEO noted that “it is rapidly evolving in a good direction.” Musk also noted that other companies are missing real-world AI and manufacturing capabilities.
17:03 CT – The next investor question asked if other carmakers are interested in licensing FSD. Elon Musk confirmed that yes, they are. “What we’re seeing is at this point is significant interest in licensing FSD,” the CEO noted. But before FSD is licensed, Tesla has to reach unsupervised FSD first.
17:01 CT – Investor questions begin. The first is about unsupervised FSD’s release. Musk noted that he believes unsupervised FSD in California and Texas this year, with many more regions at the end of 2025.
“We’re looking for a safety level that is significantly safer than a human driver,” Musk said. “The only thing holding us back is an excess in caution,” Musk said.
17:00 CT – The CFO noted that Tesla’s growth came from Megapack and Powerwall. Both continue to be production-constrained, which will hopefully be relieved by China, whose Shanghai Megafactory is producing Megapacks. Tariffs, however, are very likely, Tesla’s CFO noted.
16:58 CT – Tesla’s CFO takes the stage. He credits the Tesla team for its performance in Q4. He also discussed some milestones, such as record deliveries in the Greater China market, which is extremely competitive.
Cost reduction continues as well, despite increased depreciation and other costs as the company prepared for the new Model Y. Overall cost per car now down below $35,000.
The new Model Y will be produced in all factories supporting the vehicle starting next month. This is unprecedented in Tesla history.
He notes that Tesla is also on track to release a more affordable model in the first half of 2025, and there will be more models from there.
16:54 CT – Elon Musk predicts increased demand in energy business. That said, he does admit that Tesla always has to allocate its battery supply. “2025 is really a pivotal year for Tesla. It might be viewed as the most important year in Tesla history,” Musk said.
16:50 CT – Elon, however, admitted that he’s making insane predictions. He cautions that his predictions aren’t necessarily precise. That said, the target is to make 10,000 Optimus robots this year. Elon is confident that Tesla can produce a few thousand this year, with a goal to ramp Optimus production every year.
Optimus’ capabilities are expected to be very impressive. Musk notes that Optimus would be able to play the piano or thread a needle. That’s how precise its hands would be. “Optimus will be able to play the piano and be able to thread a needle,” Musk said.
16:48 CT – Tesla expects to launch Unsupervised FSD as a service in Austin in June. Musk noted that Tesla’s unsupervised FSD system is already working very well in the company’s factories.
“The cars aren’t just driving to the same spot. The cars are programmed to a lane” or a destination parking spot for pick up from customers. Teslas will be in the wild–with no one in them–in Austin in June,” Musk said.
16:45 CT – Musk noted that Tesla’s current constraints are battery packs for now. “Things are going to ballistic next year…and ’27, and ’28,” he said.
Musk also stated that the training needs for the Optimus robot is 10x what’s needed for a car. A humanoid robot, however, probably has 1000 more uses than a car.
“We live at this unbelievable inflection point in history,” Musk said.
16:40 CT – “I know I’ve been called the boy who cried wolf. I’m telling you, there’s a damn wolf this time. It can drive you,” Musk joked, discussing FSD and his past failed predictions about when unsupervised FSD will be ready.
He also highlighted that while FSD behaved like a neophyte driver before, it won’t be like that forever.
“The only people who are skeptical are those who haven’t tried it (FSD),” he said. He also highlighted the potential of the Tesla Network. “It works fine in the US, and of course, it will work just well anywhere else. The reality of autonomy is upon us,” Musk added.
16:38 CT – Elon takes the stage. He states that Tesla ended the year with a run rate of 2 million cars per year. The Model Y was the world’s best-selling car again in 2024. He shares an optimistic outlook on Tesla’s autonomy program.
“Autonomy is 10X-ing,” Musk said, adding that he still sees a path toward Tesla becoming the world’s most valuable company by a mile. “There’s a path to that,” he said.
Musk noted that Tesla laid the groundwork for autonomous cars and robots in 2024, and these efforts will continue in 2025. “This will set up what I think will be an epic 2026 and a ridiculously good 2027 and 2028,” Musk said.
16:34 CT – Here we go! Tesla’s IR announces that Tesla CEO Elon Musk and a number of executives are present at the call.
16:30 CT – It’s time! It won’t be surprising if Tesla starts a bit late. That being said, there will probably be quite a number of interesting discussions in this call.
Just recently, Tesla posted the first video of its FSD Unsupervised system working in the Fremont Factory. That’s a very big deal.
16:25 CT – Hello, and happy earnings day to everyone! Tesla missed some of Wall Street’s expectations, but TSLA stock seems to be doing pretty well in today’s after-hours. It’s up about 2.3% as of writing.
As always, this might be a very interesting earnings call.
Don’t hesitate to contact us with news tips. Just send a message to simon@teslarati.com to give us a heads up.
Investor's Corner
New drone video shows Tesla’s Optimus Factory reaching a turning point
New drone footage shows Tesla’s dedicated Optimus factory steel frame nearing completion at Giga Texas.
Tesla’s dedicated Optimus factory at Gigafactory Texas is closing in on a finished steel frame, according to drone footage posted Thursday afternoon by longtime site observer Joe Tegtmeyer. In the video, Tegtmeyer said structural steel assembly is now about five column grids away from reaching the building’s north perimeter beam, putting the primary skeleton in its final stretch roughly six months after Tesla broke ground on the North Campus site in late March.
The Giga Texas Optimus Factory latest update … construction keeps moving fast!
Steel assembly is now only about 5 column grids from the north perimeter beam. Concrete is going in on the three upper floors, rebar is still being laid for more pours, and footing / grade-beam work… pic.twitter.com/qvFPvwnYzW
— Joe Tegtmeyer 🚀 🤠🛸😎 (@JoeTegtmeyer) September 17, 2026
Tegtmeyer’s footage shows concrete already going in on three upper floors while crews continue laying rebar and pouring grade beam footings at ground level. That kind of parallel work, steel rising at one end of the site while concrete sets at the other, is a scheduling approach Tesla used at the original Giga Texas building and appears to be repeating here to save time before the plant’s targeted 2027 production start.
Teslarati has tracked the building’s progress since Tesla confirmed construction was officially underway in May, when the first steel structure went up on what was then bare, reclaimed land. The facility is part of a more than 5.2 million square foot expansion of Giga Texas’s North Campus that Tesla has said will eventually run nearly the length of the existing vehicle factory, over 4,000 feet, while sitting somewhat narrower. Musk has pegged the long term output target at 10 million Optimus units a year once the line is running at full capacity, a volume that would dwarf the one million unit pilot line Tesla is standing up separately at its Fremont, California factory.
Tesla Giga Texas to feature massive Optimus V4 production line
The Texas facility sits alongside another major buildout on the same campus. Terafab, the joint Tesla and SpaceX chip fabrication plant that will eventually supply the silicon running Optimus units in the field. Housing robot assembly and chip production on the same grounds is a deliberate supply chain decision, cutting down on the shipping and lead time that would otherwise sit between the two.
Tesla has not given an updated timeline beyond its previously stated goal of bringing high volume Optimus production online at the site in the summer of 2027. Fremont’s smaller pilot line began mass producing the current Gen 3 robot in January, with that plant expected to build tens of thousands of units this year primarily to generate the real world data Tesla needs to refine the robot’s software before Giga Texas ramps up. Six months of visible construction progress, tracked almost entirely through Tegtmeyer’s recurring drone flights, gives the clearest outside look yet at how seriously Tesla is treating that 2027 deadline.
Investor's Corner
Tesla and SpaceX take “Terafab” Trademark fight to Federal Court
Tesla and SpaceX sue a small Illinois firm after cease and desist letters over Terafab.
Tesla and SpaceX are asking a federal judge to rule that their planned Terafab chip factory does not infringe a small Illinois company’s trademark, a request that arrives only after months of quiet negotiation broke down this summer.
The dispute traces to May 18, when Tesla filed three U.S. trademark applications for “Terafab” and “Tesla Terafab,” covering semiconductor chips and related chip making services. TERA-print LLC, a nanotechnology company that has held a federal trademark for “Tera-Fab” since 2021, responded five days later with a cease and desist letter. According to the lawsuit, first reported by Reuters, TERA-print argued that Tesla and SpaceX’s use of “Terafab” would confuse consumers familiar with its own trademark, which covers a desktop photolithography printer sold to researchers for sensor and bioengineering work.
What stands out in the filing is the timing of TERA-print’s own paperwork. One day before sending that cease and desist letter, on May 22, TERA-print applied to expand its existing registration to cover semiconductor materials, silicon chips, nanoelectronic devices and AI design services, categories it had not previously claimed. Tesla and SpaceX call that filing opportunistic in their complaint, noting it arrived two months after Tesla’s public Terafab announcement and just days after Tesla’s own trademark applications went in.
Elon Musk launches TERAFAB: The $25B Tesla-SpaceXAI chip factory that will rewire the AI industry
By June 10, TERA-print was threatening to sue for federal trademark infringement, false designation of origin and unfair competition, the complaint states. Rather than wait to be sued, Tesla, SpaceX and SpaceXAI met with TERA-print six separate times between June and August trying to resolve the dispute directly. Those talks collapsed, and the companies filed for declaratory judgment this week in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, asking a judge to find that “Terafab” does not infringe TERA-print’s mark before TERA-print can file a claim of its own.
TERA-print isn’t backing down. The company told PCMag it discussed a settlement with Tesla as recently as September 2 and feels misled by what it called Tesla’s professed interest in settling. Its CTO, Andrey Ivankin, said TERA-print holds a Defense Department contract to fabricate semiconductors and partially owns Mattiq Inc., an AI company built on TERA-print’s products, and that the company will vigorously defend its rights.
Tesla and SpaceX argue the overlap is superficial. Terafab is planned as a $16.8 billion complex spanning roughly 100 million square feet at the Grimes County site SpaceX confirmed last month, built to produce chips for Optimus robots, Tesla’s AI computing needs and SpaceX’s orbital data center ambitions, a scale and purpose the companies say no reasonable consumer would confuse with a tabletop lab printer. TERA-print’s product line has stayed focused on lithography tools for biological and sensor research since it registered its mark in 2021.
The trademark fight is the second legal dispute tied to the Terafab project in the past week, following a separate SpaceX suit aimed at keeping company records about the facility out of public view, as KBTX reported. Whether construction proceeds under the Terafab name now depends on a federal judge in Austin.
In a new interview on Wednesday, Tesla uber bull Ron Baron said that anyone looking to buy the company’s stock should do so as soon as they can.
Baron, founder and CEO of Baron Capital and one of Tesla’s most persistent institutional bulls, used a CNBC Squawk Box appearance on Wednesday to deliver a familiar message with fresh urgency: In his opinion, Tesla stock is a buy:
“The time to buy the stock is now. FSD is catching on, and it’s going to be bigger and bigger. 55% of new buyers are buying it (Teslas) with FSD. It’s going to be everywhere. It’s safer.”
The Baron Capital frontman’s case is built around Full Self-Driving. Tesla reported 1.48 million active FSD subscriptions in the second quarter, up 56 percent year over year, and company officials have said roughly 55 percent of new North American deliveries left with a subscription enabled.
Baron framed that attach rate as proof the product is moving from enthusiast extra to default expectation, and as a reason software, not just vehicle volume, should drive the next phase of value.
His conviction on Tesla shares is not theoretical, as Baron Capital made its first Tesla investment in 2014, after years of meetings that began around the 2010 IPO roadshow. The firm later built a large SpaceX position starting in 2017.
Ron Baron today in new interview on Tesla:
“The time to buy the stock is now. FSD is catching on, and it’s going to be bigger and bigger. 55% of new buyers are buying it (Teslas) with FSD. It’s going to be everywhere. It’s safer.” pic.twitter.com/Rv5PB0bVZ2
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) September 16, 2026
Baron said those Musk-led bets have generated about $30 billion of the $71 billion in profits Baron Capital has produced for clients. He put the firm’s current exposure at roughly $25 billion in SpaceX and $5 billion in Tesla. Personally, he described SpaceX as his largest holding, at about $5 billion, with about $1.5 billion in Tesla and additional Tesla exposure through the firm’s funds.
That concentration is also a statement of loyalty. Asked about talk of a SpaceX-Tesla combination, Baron said he had already walked Elon Musk through arguments for and against a deal, then declined to repeat them on air. His public position was simpler: “Whatever you decide is better is what I’m going to support,” he said to Musk.
Baron also said that he picked up the farewell edition of the Model S after Tesla decided to sunset the vehicle earlier this year, calling it his favorite car he’s ever driven.
NASA taps SpaceX for more astronaut missions as Boeing Starliner remains grounded
New drone video shows Tesla’s Optimus Factory reaching a turning point
